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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24619474">Rectifier</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticbasic/pseuds/galacticbasic'>galacticbasic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Castlevania, Castlevania (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya Needs a Hug, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Backstory, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Castlevania Season 3, Emotional Manipulation, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injured Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya, Kind of Discontinued, M/M, Manipulation, Manipulative Relationship, Multi, Nightmares, POV First Person, POV Third Person, Post-Canon, Post-Castlevania (Cartoon) Season 3, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sad Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya, Trephacard, Unwilling Hector, Whump</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:41:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,904</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24619474</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticbasic/pseuds/galacticbasic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of three Castlevania shorts. The first chapter is from Hector’s perspective; the second includes Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard; the third some musings on Lenore (and company). All are set directly after the end of S3.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont, Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades, Hector/Lenore (Castlevania), Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Gullible</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Rectifier, how’s the world supposed to be?<br/>Rectifier, take my hand and rescue me. </p><p>~ Rectifier by Ra,<br/>which I felt was quite fitting to the title.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hector, forgemaster, father of a thousand demons. A slave.</p>
<p>Hector begins his new life begrudgingly, a slave to Lenore yet still hopeful for a chance at escape. Magic isn't infallible, after all; and neither is love.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>How could I have been so stupid?</p>
<p>The word that comes to mind is <em>gullible</em>. I believed Dracula even when he—what word did I use? Yes—<em>withheld</em>, from me, what his plans for humanity entailed. I believed Carmilla, to the point of betrayal, thinking somehow her callous sensibility would put me ahead, leave me on top, until the moment she put that collar around my neck. It should have made me cautious. Instead it made me bold. How did Lenore put it? Beaten down a dozen different ways, and still I manage to believe in myself. I wish on Dracula’s grave Carmilla had been the one to break me. But oh, it had to be Lenore.</p>
<p>At first I planned on lying my way through her weaknesses until she got me outside the castle wall. Maybe farther. But as she spoke I fell into her trap like a beggar starving for scraps of attention, of <em>praise</em>, those keen ideas of hers weaving threads of doubt and indecision in my mind. Dracula had used me, I discovered, and Carmilla had freed me. It made no sense to what my world had previously been. Yet every time we spoke those threads wrapped tighter, becoming ropes, then bonds, tying me until her hold became inescapable.</p>
<p>Feeding me with finery, giving me vampire literature to entertain myself with, the gross flattery—her idea of a joke, or a ruse, or some clever manipulation. But I fell, once again, and the cruel slave ring bit into my finger as I professed my undying loyalty to Lenore. Her wicked teeth bared as I came with the pain of it, laughing, sucking the blood from my shaking fingertip, laving it from my skin. Afterward she fed from me. The fangs sank into my neck and suddenly I was kissing her ruby lips again, and sleeping forever. I awoke as she led me through the castle halls, trapped in a merciful daze. That’s all I could think. Merciful, to take away the aftershock of the magic. To deprive me of the pain and the knowledge in those intimate moments of just how low I’d sunk. Merciful.</p>
<p>The three other vampires made sounds of disgust when Lenore said she’d train me at sex. Carmilla may nearly have killed me, but I never feared her as perhaps I should have. She called me <em>pet</em>, and I realized most vampires see humans as she does: animals, livestock, food. To Carmilla, taking advantage of me would be beastiality.</p>
<p>Lenore had no such reservations.</p>
<p>They called her a genius, and my chest sang with the idea that it took some effort to enslave me. Then I regarded Lenore, and her bright chestnut eyes sparkling like wine in the war room and the freedom in her tongue I will never have again. My ribs ached, from the sex or the shame or the magic penetrating my soul I couldn’t tell. My master led me down the corridor, my composure as stiff as wet-rotting wood. To be here any longer became unbearable, to exist as a forgemaster and a slave. Lenore said I deserved to feel safe—I deserved nice things, good things. Comfort. Luxury, even. Did she say this for my benefit, or hers? It might comfort her to believe she will treat me well, employing diplomacy and all that shit where we both leave happy.</p>
<p>In happiness or despair, I can never leave.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The morning has not yet broken. My nightshirt lies twisted across my frame as I awake to the sound of a creaking door, the dim twilight diffusing through the double windows either side of my bed. I jolt against the carved headboard, reaching for the nightstand.</p>
<p>“No need for that, pet,” Lenore purrs as my hand grasps open air. Unarmed, although I could not harm her with the swiftest or deadliest of weapons, I stifle a curse. My hammer lies on a forging table far below this room, and without it I am <em>just</em> a slave. With it—I don’t know. I thought my life meant something, until now. With a forgemaster’s instrument I can make countless creatures of the night, a myriad of monsters suited to my own desires. I have that freedom, at least.</p>
<p>Hector, forgemaster, father of a thousand demons. A slave. A pet. A human being.</p>
<p>Lenore approaches, her embroidered dress trailing the floor in loose chiffon curls.</p>
<p>“What do you want, Lenore?” I hesitate, straightening my sweat-sticky shirt. A nightmare swirls in my memory, something heinous. I cringe.</p>
<p>She just smiles, and closes the curtains. In the pitch dark, her scent like jasmine and sweet wine grows stronger until I can taste it. She kisses me, pulling away the sheet I cling to, twirling her finger in my silver locks. I shiver in the open air.</p>
<p>I retreat as my eyes adjust to the darkness, just slight enough to meet her stare. My heart hammers against my sternum. “Lenore,” is all I can stammer as her fangs bare against my neck.</p>
<p>My hands find her shoulders and I draw away before she can pierce me, head pressed against the wall. Lenore chuckles, lifting a leg over my thighs to straddle me, sharp nails pressed into the soft flesh either side of my jaw. A yawn comes to the back of my throat but fear suppresses it.</p>
<p>“I could refuse,” I gasp as she rocks against me, forcing my face toward her, presenting her pierced and bejeweled ear for me to kiss. I bring my lips to the cold skin, unable to open them again.</p>
<p>“You don’t want to refuse,” she hums, and the ring tightens, my left hand goes numb, her magic threatens every nerve in my body. I would prefer the pleasure this could bring over the pain of resistance; but the shame—the shame I could not bear. My life is over, no matter how long I survive from this moment. No matter how she uses me I am already finished.</p>
<p>My trembling lips part, giving into her advance, letting her undress me like a doll. Lenore stands from the bed, slipping down her stockings and raising her gown. Light streams around the blackout curtains, the wood floor glowing beneath. My master carefully avoids the sunlight, and I wait for her. She slips onto the bed and bends forward, a hand between my hips, positioning me. A kiss between my brows. Warmth spreads from my center, pleasure flushing against my chest, spiking into my arms, trembling in my legs. Lenore kneels above me, her soft slender hands pinning my wrists to the headboard.</p>
<p>
  <em>Do I deserve to feel safe?</em>
</p>
<p>She doesn’t satisfy herself holding me down, so she gives me pause as she retrieves her stockings from the floor. When she wrests my arm to the bedpost, I comply. When she ties my wrists with the stretchy fabric, I do not resist. When she kisses me with the fervor of a fresh lover, I return it.</p>
<p>“You couldn’t refuse me even if you did want to,” Lenore sings into my mouth. “But I’ll give you the illusion, pet. Fight against the restraints that hold you. I give you permission, Hector; act as you would.”</p>
<p>The mention of my name sends shivers down my back, wakes me from my daze. “Get off me, you backstabbing vampire bitch.” My hands make fists. With all my strength I still cannot escape; it is more the magic that holds me than the bonds.</p>
<p>“Pretty boy,” she croons, tracing her nails down my chest, riding me gently. “You will come to love me again. The hurt you feel will fade, and there will be nothing but comfort and pleasure and sunshine.”</p>
<p>“Fuck you, Lenore,” I spit. “Look at me. Just because you took away the bars doesn’t mean this isn’t a cage.” I flex my ring hand, sitting up as I can. She wraps her legs tight around my middle, pulling out strands of my hair as she moves.</p>
<p>Her eyes grow hard as she meets mine. “I want you to be satisfied with your life. I want you to be happy.”</p>
<p>“How can I possibly be <em>happy</em>?” I cry as she tightens around me, my flesh burning within her. I still, pulsing, and she wraps her slender fingers around my throat until I choke, and my eyes roll back into my skull and the only sound I comprehend is the rushing of blood through my arteries. As she releases me I gasp for breath, my mouth unbearably hot and full. Something aches between my teeth—my tongue?—my cheeks?—my lips? Blood pours out as Lenore opens me for a kiss, swallowing the bitter liquid as if it were wine.</p>
<p>
  <em>Or do I deserve this?</em>
</p>
<p>This violation. As Lenore unbinds me, my hands begin to tremble, the clammy skin blue with pinpricks. Tears spill from beneath my lids. I curl against her bare chest like a child to its mother, clinging to her, distraught.</p>
<p>“You did well,” she says softly, as if it is a reassurance. “Sweet boy.”</p>
<p>I dream of stepping into the sunlight on a summer day in my homeland, by the sea, the Mediterranean waters sparkling with opalescent tones of emerald and azure. I bury my face into Lenore’s auburn hair, and when I retreat the water has turned black, the sunlight decays to rays of pitch, the earth scorched and dead beneath us. The ring makes my finger bleed, and I tear at it with my nails until my hand is flayed and streaked with crimson. The magic penetrates me, up my arm and through my heart and down my spine. It drives through my head, into my eyes, and I twitch and scream but no sound escapes my lips. Lenore lies there beneath me, pleased, and I wither against her gaze.</p>
<p>
  <em>Gullible.</em>
</p>
<p>I wake in a pool of sweat, the sheets soaked with my scent and hers. During the daylight hours, I must fend for myself: reading through the vast libraries, forging night creatures for Carmilla’s army, walking the castle grounds. Teaching myself practical knowledge; honing my strength; memorizing this beautiful, terrible place. Planning escape.</p>
<p>Carmilla would have me imprisoned, stripped, starved. Morana would have me tortured until I either forged her an army of the undead or died from the strain of it. Striga would torture me herself, just to relish her power over me, to feel her own control.</p>
<p>But Lenore? Lenore has fed me, and clothed me, and given me agency; treated me like a human in this nightmare filled with the dead, and the undead. Lenore has empowered me, and I...</p>
<p>I torture myself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Reunited</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Zumi and Taka were their names, and I loved them.”</p>
<p>Trevor and Sypha backtrack to Alucard's Castle where a nasty surprise awaits. The shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality is a little more ingrained than any of them would like to admit.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Trevor and Sypha’s wagon rolled along the muddy road, their tired horse ambling over weeds and uneven roots as they forged the path ahead. After leaving Lindenfeld, and the disturbing events which occurred there, the pair would need both replenishment and reinforcements before taking on whatever lay festering in Wallachia. Something new was brewing across the land, its rancid taste in the very air they breathed, on Sypha’s lips and in her fingers when she used magic. Trevor’s darkened brow lowered, the frustration of backtracking bearing into him like a weight to which God kept adding stones. But they would have to see that place again in order to advance. </p>
<p>The Belmont Estate. Dracula’s Castle. </p>
<p><em> Alucard’s </em> Castle, now. </p>
<p>Adrian Tepes would know nothing of the horrors that befell the pair at Lindenfeld, a blessing considering he must have been still recovering from the death of his father. The priory had been destroyed, along with the Judge’s home and most of the town—but a few deaths could not stop those accursed monks from spreading like the plague. If one night creature could summon Dracula once more, so could another. That must be prevented at all costs, even to the grief of the young dhampir. </p>
<p>Alucard, more than anyone, would know the consequences Vlad Dracula Tepes’ resurrection would confer. If worse came to worst, would he be able to kill his family again? Better not to find out. </p>
<p>Sypha’s breath hitched as they came into the clearing, grasping Trevor’s arm with a cold certainty. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered, lip trembling. </p>
<p>Trevor sighed. “I feel it too.” He flicked the reins, grunting at the horse. “Quickly now.”</p>
<p>The castle loomed in the middle distance, its spires pitch black against the clouding sky. The air smelled of rain, and death. An ominous silence filled the place where birds should chirp and the wind rustle through the trees. The horse’s hoofsteps grew dim, far away, faded, echoing into nothingness. Everything was that tall, dark facade, standing in the middle of nowhere; the castle, a mask of despair. Dracula’s own face, omnipresent, powerful yet withered and charred.</p>
<p>A tomb. </p>
<p>When the castle’s face filled their sight, two angels emerged upon either side of the entrance: their white raiment whipping in the stirring wind, drained bodies pallid as ghosts and twice as frightening. Trevor leapt from the cart, running to examine the rotting eyes, the piked-open mouths, the sliced throats filled with maggots and crusted blood. The stiff angels swayed gently in the overcast breeze. </p>
<p>Sypha cried out at the sight, neither in fear nor in horror, but in anguish. </p>
<p>Trevor turned. “Human, from what I can tell. Twenty, maybe younger. Killed first, then impaled. Wounds look like that sword of his.”</p>
<p>Sypha slipped from the wagon, summoning an orb of blue magic, casting lurid light on the corpses. “Alucard?” She gasped, her brow knit. Trevor nodded gravely. “But why?” </p>
<p>“That’s what I want to know.” </p>
<p>Trevor gripped the Morning Star, and kicked open the great door. Inside the dim hall lay dusty and unkept, the large stairs still cracked and bloodstained from the battle at Braila, and the slayings of all the vampire generals. Ash coated the walls where Sypha’s magic had burned. Broken glass littered the floor. Faint creaking in the distance alerted the hunters; they were not alone. </p>
<p>“Alucard,” the young Belmont roared, staring at the dais. “<em> Alucard! </em>”</p>
<p>A flash of red, and the dhampir stood inches from Trevor’s face. His pristine gold-flake eyes held leagues of distance within their depths. “Belmont. Magician.”</p>
<p>Sypha summoned another ball of energy, and Trevor’s eyes grew hard against Alucard’s greeting. “Tell me. Did you kill those two <em> kids </em> hanging outside?”</p>
<p>Adrian turned his back to the pair, seemingly staring at the floor, or his hands, which raised to rake through the long strands of his sunbeam hair. “Yes. Now get out.”</p>
<p>The hunter grabbed Alucard by the shoulder in an attempt to meet his face, but his arm flew back and knocked Trevor to the ground. In another instant the Morning Star lashed the dhampir, pulling him to the floor as Trevor stood, Sypha’s magic forming in icy spikes to threaten Alucard from all angles. A moment passed as the Morning Star slammed down across Alucard’s throat, Trevor’s hands on either side of the chain pinning him. The silver burned into his glimmering skin. </p>
<p>“Why?” Came Trevor’s soft question, the roughness in his voice just broken enough. </p>
<p>Alucard waited, Sypha dematerializing her glassy spines in anticipation. Then he threw Trevor back, suddenly behind, the Morning Star in his naked hands, searing hot. The whip backfired as he spun, the young Belmont slinging across the dirty floor. “Get out!” Adrian cried, a plea more than an order, teleporting in a scarlet flash to the middle of the dais. </p>
<p>Sypha and Trevor nodded at one another. The magician created steps one by one, in the air, until she was almost above the dhampir. Trevor lunged, his whip wrapping Alucard, who tipped over the balcony like a statue, lifeless as a corpse, head bashing into the marble floor without the use of his arms to break the fall. In a moment Sypha landed. Her magic materialized in a stake above his heart, so close it tore his shirt open as he slid.</p>
<p>“Finish it,” Alucard said in monotone. But tears sprang to his eyes, and he bit his pale lip, and though Sypha’s magic remained in place she sank to her knees beside him. </p>
<p>She examined Alucard’s wrists, scarred deeper than the temporary burn of Trevor’s Morning Star or a silver trinket. The hunter released his whip’s hold, and Sypha’s ice evaporated, and the dhampir lay shaking against the stone with tears rolling down his temples. The open-breasted linen shirt he wore exposed more delicate scarring, his arms and chest and body bound with the markings of some cruel device, something made to restrain him. Old blood glued his silky hair to itself in uneven crimson stains. Grief lined his brow. </p>
<p>“My God,” Trevor gasped. “What happened to you?”</p>
<p>Alucard squeezed his eyes shut at the pity. “Please, just... go. Didn’t you see what I did to them? Please... I want—I have to be alone. For all our sakes.”</p>
<p>“Tell us what happened, Alucard. Please,” Sypha pleaded, pulling him up into an embrace. </p>
<p>Trevor paused, kneeling and joining the two as the dhampir grimaced and began his tears afresh. “We’re not going anywhere.” </p>
<p>Alucard sobbed a few times before regaining some semblance of composure, staggering breaths still wracking his pallid form. The pair helped him stand, the great hall coming into and going out of focus rapidly. Alucard blinked, dark spots invading his sight, dizziness overwhelming him. His head lolled as Trevor supported him, suddenly unsure of how he got there. Looking down at Sypha, whose hands began to craft some healing spell. Traversing the hundred-staired path to the nearest bedroom untouched and unharmed in the battles of the past months. A once-grand mattress creaked beneath his weight, and again his young protégés knelt above him, restraining him, betraying him, killing him. His shirt clung sweaty to his heaving chest, and Sypha stripped it off. Trevor returned with a basket in his arms. </p>
<p>“Your kitchens are empty,” Trevor said with a note of helplessness. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”</p>
<p>Alucard stirred, half-conscious. “How many days would you say they’ve been out there?”</p>
<p>Trevor swallowed his answer, instead taking a skin of water and putting it to the dhampir’s lips. Sypha drew something out of the basket and wiped his chest with it; his fevered skin cooled by degrees. Hours passed. Trevor forced Alucard to eat the stale bread and old cheese he found in the larder, though he tried to refuse. Finally he slept. </p>
<p>The couple drew away to a corner, Sypha signaling for a little chat. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” </p>
<p>“Self defense, it seems like,” Trevor sighed. “But why the... impaling?”</p>
<p>Sypha shook her head. “Those two were people he trusted. How else would the slayer of Dracula get those scars? It had to be betrayal.” </p>
<p>“And the staking part is, what, revenge? A big fuck-you for betraying him?”</p>
<p>“No. Desecrating their corpses isn’t punishment for them; they’re already dead. It’s punishment for him. A reminder of what he did. An ‘I’m going to scare everyone away so I don’t hurt anyone else.’ An ‘I deserve to be alone.’” </p>
<p>“An ‘I deserve to die,’ too, perhaps,” Trevor grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What the fuck were we thinking, Sypha? How did we leave him all alone?”</p>
<p>Sypha regarded the sleeping Alucard curled against a pillow, weakened from starvation and grief. “All our lives we have been travelers, no parents to speak of, living the lives the world needed us to lead. Alucard was a boy who had never lived outside his family, losing both mother and father in the space of a year, and we asked him to become an adult just like that. Little wonder it turned out like this. Besides them we were all he had.” She took a breath, and sighed. “I suppose we were thinking he was like us. But he’s not. He’s not at all like us.”</p>
<p>Trevor glanced over at the dhampir. “I was a wreck after my family died. I had to grow up all on my own, too.”</p>
<p>“And how many years did that take you?” Sypha quipped, driving her point home. Trevor pulled her close and tousled her hair, neglecting his response. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Alucard jolted up, his fangs baring to the drafty air, heart hammering against his ribs as if it were trying to escape his chest. Sypha and Trevor awoke either side of him, lying atop the crimson blankets to be with him as he slept. He glanced at one and then the other, heat coming into the hollows of his cheeks.</p>
<p>“I thought you’d have gone to bed,” Alucard panted, clutching the bedspread absently. </p>
<p>Sypha put her hand over his, Trevor standing to get some water from the skin. “What’s wrong?” she asked as Trevor brought the drink back. Alucard sank back against the headboard. </p>
<p>“I keep having this dream,” Alucard sighed. “Every night. Every night I kill them, again and again. If you stay here, like they did... it might be you I kill.”</p>
<p>“What happened?” Trevor grimaced as he regarded the scars once more, handing Alucard the skin. “Why did they attack you?”</p>
<p>The dhampir took a few gulps and then put his eyes into the heels of his clammy hands. “Can we not do this now?”</p>
<p>Sypha brushed back his hair with her fingertips, caressing his neck. “Maybe if you tell us, the dreams will go away.”</p>
<p>Tears ran beneath his palms. “Zumi and Taka were their names, and I loved them. I loved them almost as much as—well.” He drew a shaky breath. “I planned to teach them everything I knew. To make them my legacy. A legacy of vampire hunters—imagine that? I thought it would be... something you’d like.” He glanced at Trevor. </p>
<p>“What went wrong?” Trevor traced a finger down the thin spiraling scars. </p>
<p>“They didn’t trust me.” Alucard dropped his hands, suddenly sobered. “They thought I was a monster, bent on their human subjugation, eradication, just like every other monster who’d ever betrayed them. Well. Maybe I am.”</p>
<p>“I don’t believe that,” Trevor said softly. “They wrought their own destruction. Not you.”</p>
<p>“They betrayed <em> you </em>,” Sypha whispered. </p>
<p>Alucard nodded, far too tired to disagree. Then he glanced back up, first at Sypha and then at Trevor, the latter a little longer. “You didn’t return here just to comfort me, and you weren’t passing by.” He shifted back against the headboard. “There is a reason, why you’re here.”</p>
<p>“Yes, unfortunately. A bad one.” Trevor gripped the dhampir’s hand, the tightness half an embrace, and half a plea. “We need your help.”</p>
<p>Alucard looked harrowed. “Is it... Dracula...?”</p>
<p>Trevor opened his mouth, but Sypha silenced him with a glance. “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she murmured carefully. “You can’t help anyone until you’ve slept and eaten.”</p>
<p>Alucard tried to insist he would be fine on his own. But before he could speak Sypha slipped under the sheets and notched herself beneath his arm, sleepy and shivering. He smiled sadly and pushed back the comforter for Trevor, who blew out the light.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Angel of Mercy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After leaving Hector to sleep off the morning’s events, Lenore contemplates her own life.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Disclaimer: I haven’t slept in 24 hours and I wrote all this in that time. FOR YOU, DEAR READER. So if it isn’t as good... you know what they say about good art.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lenore slips from Hector’s sleeping frame, curled like a child to its mother’s chest. He shifts but does not wake; instead he mumbles her name, in passion or in fear, without a semblance of anger or disgust or even vague resentment crossing his lips. Yes, he needed her this way. Hector must be pried apart gently after how she had betrayed his trust, but with enough force he understands he is being opened. And it is Lenore who must do it, if only to unlock the little house where he’d burned his mother and father and with them all his feelings left inside. Before her he’d known nothing of love, little of sex, and only something of the fleeting lit matches of figures—women and men—that struck desire into his being. Companionship he had touched upon, desired for—with animals, with Dracula, with the little flickering resurrected things he could make. Lenore would placate him with these things, and much more, if he would let her.</p><p>But for now this is what must be done.</p><p>It is wicked to break him this way, but not cruel—Hector will come to love Lenore again, of that she is certain; and then her careful prying will no longer be necessary. For Hector, with love comes a certain vulnerability, a center Lenore sought to expose and keep in the open lest he bury it away somewhere inside. He could throw up walls, yes; but she could always crack through them once more in times like this, when she’d hurt him, when she needed to reopen his wounds to remind him who could close them again. Consider it cosmetic surgery. A means to an end.</p><p>She brushes a lock of hair around the shell of his ear. “I’m here,” she coos at his unconscious insistence, and he rolls over grasping at something invisible. Avoiding the subtle beams of light now breaking around the curtained windows, she picks her way over the black cobbled floor with stockings in hand. Striga and Morana will have long since gone to bed, and Carmilla—well, who knows about Carmilla at any hour, she smiles to herself. But Carmilla is somewhere else, and Lenore remains undisturbed as she dresses herself and saunters down the hall in contemplation.</p><p>The war room lies grand and empty, scattered plans about the many-sided table. Morana’s grand scheme of hiring mercenaries to secure the empire’s borders almost canceled out the need for Hector’s forging skills, but with the slave ring on his finger the other vampires could hardly find reason to fault or mistrust him. With the slave ring Hector would be saved from an agonizing slow death in the dungeons, stripped and beaten, his flesh growing soft with bruises and then hard with frostbite. With the slave ring, Hector would be nearly free, his only boundaries keeping him from the kind of reckless self-harm ever plaguing humankind they like to call courage, or valor, or something of the sort.</p><p>Lenore shudders as she examines the maps with Striga’s shaky cyrillic and Morana’s casual Latin calligraphy written up and down, back and forth across the page. Mercenaries here. Soldiers there. Night hordes here again. Plans, schemes, dreams—yet, what are they doing it for again? To amuse themselves? To glut themselves on power and the blood of teenage virgins? Lenore sighs, stands to open the cabinet and selects a clinking crystal chalice. Blood they have, human blood, <em>enough</em> human blood—not to last a lifetime, perhaps, but enough to satisfy her.</p><p>Sister-rulers and a castle large enough for thrice their measly court, a steady blood supply, a <em>pet</em>—what could she possibly desire next?</p><p>The blood drains from her glass like strong drink in a sip, warming her icy insides. Lenore vacates the war room tinged with a lost longing, a kind of emptiness she can neither replicate nor pronounce. The thought of Hector stirs something within her she long believed was dead, that <em>should</em> be dead; the thought of him curled in a bed, shaking with love and grief and something in the middle; the thought of him trapped, starving and naked in a dungeon; the thought of him pierced, and staked through with a bloodied silver nail—no—</p><p>No—not Hector. Before Hector. Before Carmilla, before her sisters. Before everything she’d long since remembered or forgotten or blocked out.</p><p>Scotland had been her home.</p><p>It had not been called such then, of course, but Lenore has long forgotten the exact details of her past. Nothing much is worth remembering, except that she was turned, and not by as brutal a master as Carmilla suffered. No—it had not been a master at all—it had been a man.</p><p>Neither a ruler of terrified townspeople nor a vicious bloodthirsty creature, nor even what one would call monstrous, nor even undead; he had been a simple man, a kind one. This vampire in her village held a raven perched on his shoulder and a hood about his face, and though he most often heralded death, the people with somber faces welcomed him when at night he emerged from his unknown haunt. <em>The Angel of Mercy</em>, her mother would whisper when his shadow crept past their door. As a child Lenore would lean against the window-ledge, wondering if his hair was ruddy as her own, his skin as pink and warm. None ever caught many glances, but they told stories. Eyes of gold, they said.</p><p>The Angel of Mercy comforted all those nearing the ends of their lives, the elderly and the ill, the children who never took their first breaths, the mothers who passed bearing them. If he arrived before death set in, those warm eyes drew the dying into a trance, the pleasure-prick of his fangs the last slight discomfort they would ever endure. Their exsanguinated bodies could be laid to rest without the burden of a quick decay, a pooling at the bottom of their fragile forms. These things he did at the village’s request alone, and by no order or sanction or wicked scheme; and the people were thankful for his services.</p><p>That same vampire-angel turned Lenore at nineteen, a pale and sickly lass and far too small for her age. Her mother lay in bed, long gone, and he fed upon her body twisted by illness and lined with wrinkles far more advanced than her age. Next he turned to the daughter, and smiled sadly, and his eyes lit with an evening fire both piteous and brave.</p><p>Without this glittering creature of the night, her fate would be the same as her mother’s, and her grandmother’s, and her matrilineage before her. This alone she knew: a weak and helpless early life, a strong gruff man to give her one child, perhaps two, always one girl; a grave by thirty-five. But not for Lenore. No—her humanity would not stand in the way of life, so much life she could drink it in for decades and never have enough, so much life she would choke on it. She pleaded with the reluctant vampire, his undead pulse leaping in his veins at the sight of her; beautiful, vain. Before her father returned, she would be like this angel before her. Immortal. Indelible.</p><p>Undead, but alive.</p><p>To Lenore it seems so long ago, as she walks the castle halls of Styria now, for the centuries she wandered the earth after that short year spent by his side.</p><p>An invasion swept the land. Her little village could not begin to resist, and under an oath of surrender by the council elders none of the people would be harmed, so long as they cooperated. But the angel, their new rulers called <em>daemonicus</em>, with their iron lashes and their tongues of steel; and Lenore, a sinful vampire-<em>scratia</em>. They built a towering fortress on the hill above the town so tall and black it blocked the western sun. The days grew short, the nights grew long, and Lenore and her lover still stayed in secret to watch over the birthplace of their love, and mind the dead.</p><p>Vampires in those days were often solitary creatures, unknown to one another and lonely for it. Before the invaders began to drive out demons, using salt and silver and other magical objects, the magical-folk cursed or blessed with drinking blood were neutral myths, and no weapons were thought to form against them. Certainly not here, where the angel walked the streets for decades, from whence he came a secret, a whispering tale. But the invaders sought to destroy Lenore and her love at any cost, and at long last bound them up with searing silver and dragged them to the fortress dungeons. Her people remained helpless to stop the terror of her imprisonment, or so she believed.</p><p>The soldiers divested Lenore of her simple garments, and shoved her into a silver-lined cage too cramped for her to shift or break hold of the burning metal. The air smelled of flesh, and her lover’s scent outside the cage as the silver cut deeper with every passing minute into his weakening frame. The golden eyes now penetrated her, made her cry out for him even as he could no longer speak.</p><p>Even as the soldiers stripped him, even as they violated him, even as his chest heaved and lashes fluttered in something that would be death, for a human—but no, they could keep ripping him apart, breaking out bones, scoring off limbs, it wouldn’t matter; he couldn’t die until the stake was driven through his chest and they just wouldn’t do it, she pleaded, she begged them to—</p><p>Yet that agonied gaze kept upon her, warm as the summer night she met him, crystal clear like sweet honey; like strong amber. He smiled one final, beautiful time—and the silver nail ran through his chest, and he evaporated like blown dust.</p><p>“Lenore.” Hector’s hammer falls onto the forging table, an echoing clang that rings in her ears the same way his greeting does. His eyes are like the sky, boundless, far away, as he searches her and finds only heartache and wistful remorse. “Don’t vampires <em>sleep</em> during the day?”</p><p>“I can’t—I couldn’t,” Lenore begins, and for the first time in her centuries of life—she is at a loss for words. What brought her to the forge, to this forgemaster? Memory fails and Hector ignores her, the drumming of his hammer resurrecting creatures of hell one by one, fitting their demonic forms into broken bodies, the aftermath of war. It reeks of death. But it also smells like birth.</p><p>“Hector,” Lenore nudges his elbow as he draws back for another strike, “I want to know about the night creatures.”</p><p>Hector stills, letting his blow fall just short of the table. He glances at her, eyes weary, and a sigh of the long-suffering sort escapes him. “What do you want to know?”</p><p>“They are demons, yes? Inside the bodies? But loyal to you,” she leads. The night creatures at one end of the room shift in unison, their glowing blue following her, a pack, a horde, a threat.</p><p>“Presumably, yes,” Hector dawdles, tinkering away at a smaller body he’s dragged before him.</p><p>“Could you—theoretically—if you knew what you were looking for—could you <em>choose</em> a soul that’s gone to hell? One you wanted to return?”</p><p>“I’m not quite sure it works like that,” Hector says, brow furrowing. “I am a forgemaster, but necromancy is another craft entirely.” The creature stumbles and babbles to life, turquoise flame flickering in its catlike eyes, once a child’s.</p><p>“Well, don’t dwell on it,” Lenore sighs. “Another thing, Hector,” and his stare now bores a hole through her sternum— “I wanted to apologize.” It twinges her with guilt to even try this. “I was rather harsh on you this morning—”</p><p>“Don’t,” he murmurs, breaking her little attempt. “It was fine. I don’t hate you.”</p><p>A smile creases the corners of her lips; that was easier than planned. “Good boy.”</p><p>Hector reduces her voice to a tiny squeak in her throat when he meets her face next, his expression a mask of stone. “Don’t ever, do it again,” he enunciates so precisely Lenore has to raise an eyebrow.</p><p>Her smile quirks with something unsaid. “Okay, darling, I won’t.”</p><p>She would.</p>
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